


Better Than Mending

by Chaerring



Series: A Taste of Their Own Medicine [1]
Category: Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Gen, Only a ship if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-14
Updated: 2012-11-14
Packaged: 2017-11-18 16:20:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/562990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chaerring/pseuds/Chaerring
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They call him Q, short for Quartermaster, because he always has what his country needs. James’s designation changed to 007 when he took the handler position because he was Q’s seventh handler and up until their first mission together MI6 had fully expected the number to reach triple digits before the end of Q’s service.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Better Than Mending

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Anonymous](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anonymous/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don't own any aspect of Bond, Q, MI6, or Moneypenny. I don't own the title either which is from _Brave New World_ : "Ending is better than mending. The more stitches, the less riches."
> 
> This is for an Anonymous prompt from tumblr: _would you tell me the story of Q the assassin and his handler, James? where Q is young and brilliant and totally amoral and James is very tired of this business._

James Bond could count on one hand the number of people Q had slept with to get information. That included the time James had spent as his handler, and the files from missions going on while James was still out in the field. It would take shuffling through twenty years of reports and Bond still didn’t think he would have an accurate count of all the people he had fucked for Queen and country. He believed Moneypenny when she told him the world is different now, but he doesn’t think it’s _that_ different. He’s pretty sure it’s just Q. 

They call him Q, short for Quartermaster, because he always has what his country needs. James’s designation changed to 007 when he took the handler position because he was Q’s seventh handler and up until their first mission together MI6 had fully expected the number to reach triple digits before the end of Q’s service. 

The problem James discovered with Q and his handlers was that most handlers were like Q. He didn’t need someone that knew how to snipe from a distance or rewire a computer. Q could do all those things himself. He was brilliant. Genuinely fucking brilliant, almost too brilliant for the country to let him do fieldwork at all, but he was young, stubborn, and highly resistant to being shut up in a lab somewhere. He was so very fucking young and what he really needed was the experience he didn’t have in his ear, arguing and second guessing him until he got _better_. 

James wasn’t sure what was stranger sometimes, listening through a comm as Q did exactly as he would have, or listening through the comm as he did the opposite. Instead of charming women to sleep with him as James had done (again and again and again....), Q smiled at them brightly and let them buy _him_ drinks. He moved his body just a hair more awkward than graceful and gave them back a friend, or confidant, that their terrorist lover had likely stripped them of.

The amazing thing to James was how often it worked. It didn’t work, of course, when the target was single or their tastes fell on the less vanilla side of pleasure, but Q had a solution for that as well. James personally thought acting as a sex worker and knocking the target out with a ring containing poison (Q’s own invention) was a little too much like the bad plot of a B-film, or maybe an adult cartoon. Even when Moneypenny teased him about some of his old exploits he refused to admit his service to the Crown had ever looked like that.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! 
> 
> If you're interested in prompting me for some 00Q you can leave a comment or hit up my ask box on tumblr at: putonhisuniverse.tumblr.com


End file.
